The popular brand of kid's cereals, General Mills, is taking a step towards getting children to eat healthier. They are going to slowly cut down the sugar levels of their cereals. They have to slowly lower the sugar levels because, "consumers have a very keen idea of what these cereals ought to taste like and if you change the taste dramatically or suddenly, they'll walk away from the brand," said Jeff Harmening, the president of General Mills. They don't want to drop the sugar levels all of a sudden, because kids would no longer want to eat the cereal. If they lower the sugar in small increments, the kids won't even notice, and continue to tell their parents to buy the cereals. General Mills also sells Progresso soup and Yoplait yogurt and they are planning to do the same for those products as well.
I think this is a really smart idea of General Mills. Sugary cereals definitely contribute to child obesity. This obesity then leads to other health problems such as high cholesterol and diabetes. It is great that big companies like General Mills are starting to make changes and make children healthier. Hopefully other companies will follow their lead and ultimately end up with a healthier population. Can it be done?
12 comments:
I really like this idea and I do think that it can be done. This is because this system has been proven to work on more extreme things like hard-core drugs (not the same I know but its an example) where the person who is so use to the drug or in this case sugar needs to slowley back away from it in order to get clean. So I agree with you that it is a very smart idea and I think that this will end with good results.
I think this can be done. It's definitely a good idea and definitely the right direction. Their plan makes perfect sense and I don't see why it won't be successful. Everyone wins, right? Kids eat healthier, parents have healthy kids, and General Mills uses less sugar in more products. Mmmm..soon those marshmallows will help me be healthy.
I suppose what General Mills is doing will help, but I'm not sure about how much General Mills plans to cut the sugar in their products. After all marshmallows are sugar. Who's to say that the amount of sugar being cut will end up being significant at all. The kids are still eating cereal with tons of sugar. So, the cereal is just less bad for you. Based on the previous blog post "Beets!," if the price of sugar increases significantly, General Mills could be saving lots of money from cutting down on sugar if they decrease the amount enough.
This is actually a fairly good idea. Of course I'm sure that it was run through the marketing and testing departments many times to make sure that it would not hurt sales. As a side benefit, it also gets them so bonus PR points. Even now, with sugar levels practically the same as they were before, I'm sure that parents feel better buying these cereals for their children. Even with obvious dual motives, this is still a step in the right direction. Who knows, maybe other companies will realize the potential of this idea after observing a "guinea-pig".
I think this idea could be done, and it would be interesting to see if other companies will apply this tactic also. I will be interesting to see if other companies care more about their consumers and the health of children or just trying to sell as much of their product as possible.
I don't think this will work because I think after awhile of reducing the sugar the kids will notice the taste difference and move on to another cereal that has more sugar.I feel like there will always be those couple of brands of cereal that are loaded with sugar.
I think this plan can be successful because it's true that children will not notice the small increments of sugar levels, and diminishing the sugar level is obviously beneficial to the kids in this country. I think it's great that this brand that is very popular among children is taking such a step to improve the health of the children, and others should look to General Mills as a model to follow.
This is a good idea. Kids will immediately notice large changes in the sugar quantities of some certain cereals, but they will hardly be able to detect smaller reductions in sugar content. It might take some time to make sugar loaded cereals healthier, but the companies are taking a step in the right direction.
The only thing I was thinking about while reading this was the Lucky Charms marshmallows, haha! Whenever I eat Lucky Charms, I always just pick out the marshmallows and throw the actual cereal back in the box...I can see why General Mills is trying to reduce their sugar levels now. Anyways, I think this definitely a beneficial step into reducing obesity in Americans in the future. Thank goodness General Mills realizes what a problem obesity in children can become for America, and it's really great how they're taking action to prevent those problems from getting out of hand.
Conservatives would be ranting if the government was mandating this sugar reduction in cereals.
DON'T TOUCH MY HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP COVERED CEREAL!.
I think it can be done, however, the basis of the flavors of that ceral brand is based around sugar. So my question is, how are their cerals still going to taste good? Most of us know the distinct taste of some of the most popular General Mills cerals; taking most of the sugar out of the ingredients, changing the flavor that much, in my opinion, will drive customers away. In the case for children, yes they probably will not notice the difference; however for us teenagers, I know I won't be buying my favorite Lucky Charms anymore.
I love this! I think this strategy can be used in a lot of foods, slowly lowering salt and sugar and fat contents. Done in small increments like theyve proposed is also a good business plan, because i doubt children will stop purchasing their favorite cereals over a nondescript detail. good stuff general mills
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